He decides to write some haiku becuase it's supposed to be peaceful and he's supposed to be peaceful. So he writes this:

Ringing in my ears
Stinging in my eyes
Try not to flinch

because fuck them. Because he doesn't give a damn what the fuck he's supposed to be. Except that he does. He's supposed to be successful, and it hurts like hell that he's not. There's honor in fighting the good fight, he hears, in plodding along in stalwart, Victorian good cheer. His is apparently not to make reply, his is but to do or die, but by God, if it's the last fucking thing he does on the face of this materialistic, judgemental, hypocritical, self-serving, hopelessly egotistic planet, he's going to reason the fuck why. Why that superior, pompus, pseudointellectual, hyperbolically anti-fashion, condescending motherfucker gets recognized every goddamned year for having a master's degree in self-importance and a PhD in bullshit and a goddamned smirk on his face in lieu of an original thought while he gets chastized for not lying about what paperwork he's turned in and what paperwork he hasn't, and gets shoved from open job to open job because he simply doesn't have it in him to stand the fuck up and say no. He used to say, see, that he was too kind to stand up, too tolerant, too accomodating, too blah blah blah, but the reality is that he's not capable, and he wonders. He wonders. He wonders if maybe they're all right, that it's the assholes who get rewarded, which is no fucking secret, but that it's the assholes who get rewarded and that they deserve it. He wonders if Somerset Maugham was on to something when he wrote "The Ant and the Grasshopper" and that it's time to man the fuck up. Man the fuck up.

And then.

And then.

And then he prays. He prays that he's fucking wrong, and wishes he didn't need an answer, that his faith was that strong, that he had Faith instead of faith, but what he has is Doubt.

So he waits.

It's Been a While

I have a girlfriend and I'm going to a Kurdish New Year's celebration this weekend. And I have a beard again.

I love having a beard.

My grad school professor liked my idea for my contemporary lyric poetry seminar paper. I plan to discuss Plumly's manipulation of tense and the subjunctive as an effort to subvert the traditional notion of temporality.

I love being a nerd.

I now own two signed McMurtry first editions.

I have a number of students with whom I would be more than pleased to spend extended periods of time in conversation. I can't think of another job which would involve my getting to know such a diverse range of personalities and talents. Some of my students are just stunning people. I can't wait for them to get away from the shithole they've grown up in.

I have stacks of books in my apartment because I don't have enough shelf space for all of them. I like the aesthetic effect.

I have mastered the use of the comma. I am confident enough with the English language that I feel comfortable rebelling against grammatical rules which I find counter-productive.

I am alive.